What to expect for this year.

Mobile: This is perhaps the most noted trend for online in 2015 with many predicting that this is the year for mobile. The majority of us now walk around with these powerful mini computers in our pockets, doing everything from searching, surfing and purchasing to Facebooking, Tweeting and Instagramming. Despite the popularity of mobile use being rather common knowledge, many still neglect to make their site mobile-friendly; for 2015, you’ll hardly have a choice! Best practise is to think about what will look good on a smaller screen and adapt your content and navigation so that your site is easy to use on a phone – not everything that looks great on a desktop will look good on a mobile.

No more keyword ‘stuffing’: Google’s move to Hummingbird has seen a huge shift in focus from exact keywords to intent and semantics. This has been done to improve user experience by taking into consideration the context and meaning behind what users are searching for, and as SEO strategists we need to be doing the same. Rather than trying to fit as many keywords into your content as possible, put the user first and write content for their benefit and the search engine will reward you.

Social Signs: This year, your presence and popularity on social media will become an even bigger factor within digital marketing. Search engines are said to be using your social media as an indication of the quality of your site, so make sure you’re posting useful and interesting things with your users in mind, and try to expand your reach as much as possible. LinkedIn have recently allowed for all members to start publishing posts about what they know and their expertise, and this looks to be a great way of reflecting high quality social signs.

Get creative with Multimedia Content: It is predicted that in 2015 there will be greater use of video engagement and creative images alongside written content, as search engines continue making progress into understanding the relevance and quality of images and videos. Using multimedia content will not only enhance user experience, but may also help to improve your rich snippets appearing on SERPs, potentially gaining you more attention. Similar with duplicated content, it’s been said that the use of stock photos may also be damaging to SEO – think about using your own photos in order to stand out.

Rankings are out? There’s been a lot of talk surrounding search engine rankings becoming obsolete as a measurement of success, with many suggesting that ROI (Return on Investment) will be more suitable to tell if your SEO is working or not. Have a look at your conversion ratios against your rankings to see if this will be applicable for your business in 2015.

As with all predictions, there’s no telling what will actually happen but there has been much talk surrounding these issues and a lot of new ideas to try out this new year – let’s see which ones work.